To some online sellers, Tesco Direct is also known as the Tesco Marketplace, as a result of this closure Tesco will cease to trade with all of their Marketplace partners.

Tesco will cease to operate its marketplace on 9th July 2018.

If you want to know more you can contact Tesco directly at PartnerQueries@tesco.com.

Below we have included a snipit from Tesco’s FAQ’s around this matter.

Tesco Direst Closes FAQ

Why are Tesco choosing to end our trading relationship?
We are always reviewing our business to ensure it reflects the needs of
customers.
This has been a difficult decision to make but a necessary one towards
establishing a more sustainable digital platform for our business.
This means that we will have to terminate our relationship with all of our trading
partners on Tesco Direct.

What should I do if I have questions about this process?
We have set up a specific mailing address for all queries. Please contact us on
PartnerQueries@tesco.com with any questions. We are here to help and arrange
further discussions where necessary.

When will be the last time customers can make a purchase on Tesco Direct?
The last day customers can make a purchase is 9 July.
What do I do about made-to-order, pre-order products or products with long lead
times?

Please remove any products from your listing feed that you will not be able to
fulfil by the time we cease trading on 9th July. If you need support with this
please contact us on PartnerQueries@tesco.com and we can remove these
products on your behalf.

What changes will be made to the customer delivery proposition until closure?
We will not be offering next day delivery on Tesco products from 22nd May. Our
current offer for delivery and collection will be within 2-5 days. If your delivery
timelines should also change, please action this in the normal way or contact us
on PartnerQueries@tesco.com for further support.

When will my last payment be received?
The final payment will be made in line with our usual payment schedule

What is “French Days”?

The event was created by the six biggest ecommerce businesses including Cdiscount (Casino Group), Showroomprive.com, Rue du Commerce (Carrefour), Fnac Darty, Boulanger and La Redoute to create a local French alternative to Black Friday.

During the French Days weekend, French customers will be able to buy products at discounted prices and enjoy other promotional benefits from these retailers. In addition to these retailers, others like Priceminister (Rakuten) will also be taking part in this major shopping event.

What does it mean for the online seller?

Well if you are selling in France in one of the particular marketplaces or your website has offerings to the French population, it may be worth to look at running “French Days” shopping campaigns. In regards to the particular marketplaces, each one is running their own different campaigns from flash sales to extra “super points”, so it is definitely worth reaching out to your account managers there.

]]>http://sellerhub.tv/french-days-ecommerce-event/feed/0694GDPR for Ecommercehttp://sellerhub.tv/gdpr-for-ecommerce/
http://sellerhub.tv/gdpr-for-ecommerce/#commentsTue, 13 Mar 2018 23:26:02 +0000http://sellerhub.tv/?p=684On May 25th 2018, Data Protection legislation changes in the EU and this affects every online seller that sells to Europe, even if they’re not based in the EU itself.

I’ve gone through a lot of posts, videos and webinars and have done my best to construct an article designed for the multichannel online seller.

But first off, I must disclose that this is not official legal advice and it is still worth speaking to a GDPR specialist to ensure your business is 100% legal. The main aim for this guide is to give you a better understanding of the terminology used and help you address areas in your business that could be affected.

High-level of GDPR

So as an online seller, you’re likely to hold personal data of your customers and under GDPR are classed as the “Controller”. You are also likely to currently use this data with 3rd parties such as MailChimp, Shopify or Google which GDPR classes as “Processors”.

When GDPR kicks in, every citizen in the EU will have the right to ask the controllers (you) to take action on personal data held on them in the following ways:

Right to be forgotten
An individual may request you to delete all personal data on them without undue delay. This data is data held by you and the 3rd parties you use called “processors”.

Right to object
The individual may prohibit you using their data for certain reasons or actions. An example here is the customer does not mind you having their data for a warranty but does not want to be marketed too.

Right to rectification
Individuals may request incorrect or incomplete data to be completed.

Right to access
Individuals have the right to know what the data about them is being processed and how.

Right of portability
Individuals may request that their personal data being held by one organisation can be transported to another.

It is important to highlight that if you have to perform one of the requests above that it is your responsibility to action that as the controller and do your very best to ensure your processors comply too.

The Penalties

GDPR is important and even know the more you read into it the more it seems focused on tackling larger businesses like Facebook and Google, it is still legally binding for companies of all sizes.

The penalties are serious, and dependent on the level of infraction you could be fined up to 4% of your global turnover or 20 million euros, which ever is the greater.

It is also important to keep your records in order and companies could be fined 2% of turnover for not taking appropriate measures.

What Classes As Personal Data

GDPR classes any data that as personal that could be used to identify them, this personal data can include:

Names

Photos

eMails

Social Media Accounts

Medical Info

IP Addresses

Bank Details

Racial/Religion Information

The general rule of thumb is if it is personal to that individual then it is likely to be classed as personal data under GDPR.

It is also important to know that Parental Consent must be given to process any data for under 16’s.

Data Breaches

Under GDPR, any situation where an outside entity gains access to user data without permissions of the individual (data breach) must be reported within 72 hours to the appropriate data protection agency.

The Useful Part – Areas To Address

The main role of GDPR is for data to be used for its intended and consented purpose. For example, if a customer purchases a product from you on eBay, that personal data should be soley used to process that order and should not be used then to market your website.

Here are some key areas an online seller will need to address in their business.

Email Marketing

If you are emailing people on your mailing list, make sure your sign up form explains what you are using their data for in layman’s terms. Keep it clear and simple.

Make sure there are no pre-ticked boxes or anything classed as unclear and enable a double opt-in feature on your email marketing.

If you feel that your current mailing list may not be GDPR compliant then run an email campaign on your current list, explaining why and giving them the opportunity to resubscribe or be forgotten. You may not want to do this but if people are going to unsubscribe then they probably weren’t right for your mailing list in the first place.

Processing Orders

Under GDPR you must have consent or a legal basis for processing data, such as where the processing of the data is necessary for the performance of a contract. (In this case we assume the processing of an order)

It is important with processing customers orders to make sure you have the knowledge of all the different parties (processors) you will transfer their personal data to in relation to this order.

Make sure all the processors are GDPR compliant, keep a record of their GDPR policy and the means of contacting them in regards to a GDPR request. Build a process, make sure the process is documented and keep yourself covered.

Make It Easy And Transparent

If you want to use someone’s data then you need to be honest about it and explain exactly what you want to do with the data. (eg. Market products to them, use it for market research etc…)

On your website, make it easy for an individual to contact you in regards to data requests by including a link on your website and email footer. Your company should have an appointed data controller who is responsible for making sure the requests are actioned.

Include in your privacy policies all the third parties you work with and how your customer’s data will be processed by using them.

The Legal Amount

Data you collect must be the minimal amount needed for its purpose and once it has served its purpose then the data must be deleted.
Basically, if you’re not going to use the data, don’t ask for it and once it has served its purpose, if you can’t justify keeping it, delete it.

]]>http://sellerhub.tv/gdpr-for-ecommerce/feed/1684Etsy To End Etsy Studio & Etsy Manufacturinghttp://sellerhub.tv/etsy-to-end-etsy-studio-and-manufacturing/
http://sellerhub.tv/etsy-to-end-etsy-studio-and-manufacturing/#respondTue, 06 Mar 2018 13:13:46 +0000http://sellerhub.tv/?p=679Etsy, the marketplace of craft and vintage products has announced that they will be closing the ‘Etsy Studio’ and ‘Etsy Manufacturing’ areas of their business this year.

What is Etsy Studio & Manufacturing?

Etsy Studio and Etsy Manufacturing are focused on selling wholesale and supply goods to the traditional craft seller. In Etsy’s statement, they have discussed putting their whole focus on the Etsy marketplace and allowing the supply sellers to list their goods on Etsy’s main platform.

What does this mean for the seller?

For some, particularity sellers selling wholesale items on Etsy, this could be seen as a good opportunity as their products will be in the mix of the main marketplace.

For craft sellers, some may see this as a negative as the general search results will be diluted with a mix of craft-style products and wholesale goods. You may even see a spike in the generic style products being listed on the platform.

Etsy’s announcement

This year, we’re focusing our efforts on giving you what you need and making Etsy the best platform for running your creative business. As part of that process, we’ve made the tough decisions to close Etsy Studio, our standalone craft supplies market, and Etsy Manufacturing, which helps sellers find production partners, as we concentrate our focus on Etsy.com.

After a year of running Etsy Studio, we realized it was better for our sellers to sell craft supplies in the same marketplace as handmade and vintage goods. This way buyers can shop for everything together and we can invest more in Etsy.com across all categories. Craft Supplies will continue to be a key category on Etsy—they’re a big part of what makes Etsy special.

As part of our emphasis on giving you the tools you need, we looked across our products and services and decided that Etsy Manufacturing was taking focus away from features and services that would have a bigger impact for your business. We’ll continue to support you with tips and best practices for working with production partners if that’s something that makes sense for your business.

We’re closing Etsy Studio and Etsy Manufacturing later this year, and we’ll send an update to sellers who might be affected by this change.

]]>http://sellerhub.tv/etsy-to-end-etsy-studio-and-manufacturing/feed/0679eBay split with PayPal – what it means for youhttp://sellerhub.tv/ebay-split-with-paypal/
http://sellerhub.tv/ebay-split-with-paypal/#respondTue, 06 Feb 2018 18:46:45 +0000http://sellerhub.tv/?p=668It has been just over a week since eBay announced that they will be splitting from Paypal and switching to Adyen as their main payment provider.

In this article we will highlight the key questions we have been asked by the online seller community.

Who is Adyen

Why are eBay using Adyen

Will PayPal be an option

What does the seller need to do

Who is Adyen

Adyen is a payment processor used by companies such as Uber, Etsy, Netflix and many others.
It offers a variety of payment processor options including Adyen MarketPay designed for marketplaces (like eBay).

Why are eBay using Adyen

The short answer is that eBay will be using Adyen to intermediate payments directly between the buyer and the seller, much in the same way Amazon does.

The reason they are using Adyen to do this rather creating their own payment solution has many long winded stories tied to it but the most prevalent one is the clause created when eBay and PayPal became separate companies. The clause we are mentioning means eBay can not create a new payment processing platform like PayPal, which Adyen, being a third party platform bypasses.

Will PayPal be an option

Yes until at least 2023, eBay will keep PayPal as a payment option. It is also important to note that Adyen also accepts PayPal as a payment method on their platform, though there has been no confirmation if this will be part of the offering for eBay yet.

What does the Seller need to do

At the moment eBay hasn’t announced if there are any key actions the seller has to take but the integration of Adyen will begin in the second half of 2018 starting in the US. It will expand internationally throughout 2019 and by 2021 eBay expects to have migrated the majority of their customers to their new payment processor.

]]>http://sellerhub.tv/ebay-split-with-paypal/feed/0668Buuy.co.uk to bring in monthly charge for store ownershiphttp://sellerhub.tv/buuy-co-uk-monthly-charge/
http://sellerhub.tv/buuy-co-uk-monthly-charge/#respondMon, 08 Jan 2018 12:29:37 +0000http://sellerhub.tv/?p=649Buuy have announced that they’ve introduced a small monthly charge for store ownership, this decision was a last resort by the founders to keep he marketplace alive. Currently Buuy.co.uk charges no fees, so they make no money from the sales currently made on their site.

Below you can see the official press release from the Buuy team.

Buuy.co.uk official press release

Buuy.co.uk, the UK marketplace will be from 1st February 2018 start to charge a £10.00 monthly fee to own a store on the growing UK site.

The decision to bring in this charge has proven to be a last resort as its founders, Justin Hodnett and Scott Janaway who wanted to keep Buuy a 100% Free Marketplace in the UK, but with spiralling costs to keep the live, the founders have had no choice to bring in a small monthly fee.

The cost of just £10 per month is far cheaper than other maketplaces such as eBay, Amazon, eBid and onBuy.

With owning a store on Buuy.co.uk you get a standard store, which enables the seller to list up to 5million listings as standard, with no other fees – as per the rest of the site. Which means no fees to list or sell. The £10 monthly fee allows the seller to know exactly how much they are paying out per month on their sales regardless of what they’ve sold, the amount will always be the same.

Of course if the seller is choosing PayPal as they payment gateway, PayPal’s Fee’s are payable also.

The response of current stores signing up to the monthly charge has been encouraging and the more stores that sign up, the monthly cost will start to come down per month and hopefully at some point stop altogether, as charging for a store is hopefully only a temporary thing and Justin and Scott want to make Buuy.co.uk 100% Free once again very soon

]]>http://sellerhub.tv/buuy-co-uk-monthly-charge/feed/0649Interview with the CTO of Buuy.co.ukhttp://sellerhub.tv/interview-with-buuy-co-uk/
http://sellerhub.tv/interview-with-buuy-co-uk/#respondWed, 04 Oct 2017 20:14:21 +0000http://sellerhub.tv/?p=619I’m really chuffed to have got Justin Hodnett, the CTO and co-founder of Buuy.co.uk to give us a little insight into himself and Buuy.co.uk.

Most of our UK readers have probably heard of Buuy and some even selling on the platform, but for those who have not then check out our article about the platform: Buuy.co.uk – A new UK Marketplace Article

So without further ado, here is the interview.

Interview with Justin Hodnett, CTO of Buuy.CO.UK

Q. Who are you and what is it that you do?

My name is Justin Hodnett and I am the CTO (Chief Technology Officer – fancy name for Geek in charge!) and also one of the co-Founders. The other co-founder is Scott Janaway. My background over the last 20+ years has always been in I.T.. No matter what job I had over the years – I spent a lot of time in retail and in the security industry I was always drawn back to IT. I think my love of IT and the digital world came at a very early stage when I was brought a Spectrum 128k – with a tape deck (posh extra at the time) – which now ironically we through a seller on Buuy do in fact sell games for that same machine. Over the years my skills in IT and everything it stood for developed and as time went on the machine I owned got better and better eventually ending up with a full-on PC set up in my mid-teens paying well over £1,000 for it – now the same machine can be found solely for scrap parts. When I hit 18 the internet was still in its early stages and I used to spend hours “surfing the web” and seeing what was out there. I used to get the Free AOL disks off magazines and worked out I didn’t pay for internet for over 18 months thanks to these disks – opps – not my fault I found a loophole! So during that time skills developed even more and just as I turned 19 I ended up working nights as a security guard in North London, at the same time I saw a home study course for learning to build websites with something called “HTML” – No idea at the time, but thought why not, so I paid £hundreds of pounds for this course and received a box, yes a box full of study material and the only thing you needed was a PC with notepad and that’s it. So during the nightshifts I studied the material writing notes etc and then going home and turning “notes” into actual websites, learning how to write “Hello World” – in the center and in bold! – When I saw that on the screen for the first time I was hooked. I cracked on and completed the course in a few months, got a lovely certificate and went out looking to put businesses on the “web” for a hefty price. My first “job” was a hotel in North London which I’d previously worked for, I convinced the owner to allow me to put the hotel on the internet and charged him a fortune for the work – I thought I like this! Set up my own little firm and carried on. Within a year I had to give it up but my skills carried on developing into Javascript / JS and PHP. So between then and now – I could literally go on about everything, but now I’m able to use my skills in IT with Buuy. Yes, they are limited but still very strong, eventually my role will be handed over to someone else to allow me to concentrate on running the day to day tasks of Buuy.

Q. What is Buuy.co.uk?

Buuy.co.uk is a simple easy to use and most importantly Free to use marketplace. Think of us as the Free UK alternative to eBay UK!

Q. What sort of online sellers does Buuy.co.uk cater for?

As we believe eBay UK is our only competitor here in the UK, if its on eBay, we want it on Buuy. Buuy is set up to be used by the average family sorting out the kids toys or the shed in time for Christmas to make extra cash and extra room right up to the hardcore sellers, huge businesses selling hundreds of thousands of listings and more. The site isn’t set up to be solely for craft, or things you can’t find on the high street – we want it all. We believe every UK as a right to make more money on selling their items, whether they are old, new, dropshipped, upcycled, recycled or anything else for that matter. With no fees at all at any stage of Buuy, you’re guaranteed to make more money. The only fee you do pay and that’s PayPal – and the only reason we use them is because of the payment protection for sellers and buyers – and that’s very important to us. Sellers can in fact not use PayPal if selling locally by the “Cash on Delivery” option and taking out PayPal altogether.

Q. What makes Buuy.co.uk different?

You’ll find that a lot of websites claim to Free, UK lovers and more.. and then find out that there are hidden fees, servers are based outside of the UK to save money and the customer support team isn’t nowhere near the UK.. Buuy is a full based UK company – every aspect of the company is UK. Also, unlike other marketplaces – when at any point are you ever going to be able to speak to a co-founder on email or phone? Try arranging a call with Devin Wenig – CEO / President of eBay – it won’t ever happen. You want to speak to Scott or myself – lets arrange it! My mobile number – personal number is on the bottom of every email. We believe that being like this makes us stand out from the rest, yes we’ve built and created Buuy, but it’s the sellers and buyers who will mould it into the platform that they want – and this takes time. The sellers understand that we’ve not got millions in the bank, nor or we a huge team – it is just Scott and myself, no one else – but there is help from friends when needed, and this is proving invaluable at the moment – eventually the friends will be joining us as staff.

Q. What the future Plans for Buuy.co.uk

I’d like to say we want to take over the world using the same business model – but why? That’s when things go wrong, the bigger you get your eye goes off the ball, you start missing emails, not talking to sellers and buyers and sorting issues out on a personal level. In the beginning yes rolling out this business model globally would have been amazing to do of course, but we decided against it, we decided to keep this amazing growing company 100% UK based. The online sellers in the UK deserve an amazingly easy to use marketplace that’s Free to use. Eventually we’ll look into our own advertising – TV, Radio, Display, etc but at the moment, we’re doing just fine.

Q. How can online sellers register for Buuy.co.uk

Its very simple to join Buuy.co.uk > https://www.Buuy.co.uk/Join – for the info and then a link to the actual registration page – which takes less than 2 mins to join.

It has been confirmed that Royal Mail will have its first strike since privatisation, though no date has been officially set there are definite indicators that it will be around the Black Friday and Cyber Monday dates.

A ‘dispute resolution procedure’ which Royal Mail claims both sides legally have to enter before a strike takes place could set the actual date of the strike back closer to the Christmas period.

Should you use other couriers

There has been no official wording from the larger marketplaces such as eBay and Amazon in regards to how they will treat the strike, but it is likely to say that if you choose to send your items with Royal Mail then you are liable for the negative feedback.

Our advice is not to think you will be protected as a seller, especially on Amazon who would argue that you have the choice of the carrier you want to use and also could have put your stock into FBA.

If you’re sending parcels/packets then you have a lot of different options out there to send your orders with during the strike dates. Sellers who sell smaller items that typically would go as a smaller letter may have to take a hit or a risk when it comes to sending their goods. (We are actively looking for an alternative at the moment for our readers)

]]>http://sellerhub.tv/royal-mail-strike-during-xmas/feed/0626Q4 Tips & Advice From The Expertshttp://sellerhub.tv/q4-ecommerce-expert-tips/
http://sellerhub.tv/q4-ecommerce-expert-tips/#respondMon, 02 Oct 2017 21:07:04 +0000http://sellerhub.tv/?p=592Q4 has just started and for the majority of us in retail and ecommerce, there is no busier time of the year.

With this in mind I am really excited to announce and share this post. My friends and experts in their fields have taken their time to share their insights and advice for Q4.

Their points come from years of experience and could not be more true. So in no particular order please enjoy the feedback from our guest experts.

Also please make sure to check out their sites and social links too! Enjoy!

eBay for Black Friday & Christmas

Prepare early for Black Friday and the holiday period. A proactive rather than reactive approach using eBay Business Policies. This will allow you to instantly alter processing time if there is a problem with order volume or postal disruption of any kind. Have realistic despatch and delivery times, not everyone wants it next day.

Use eBay promotional tools to plan and vary longer term attractive offers rather than heavy offers over the Black Friday weekend only; not everyone shops on this weekend. Don’t forget to have an attractive offer over the holiday period for those wanting to spend Christmas money on their new mobile device.

Have a sensible cut off time for last despatch before closing for the holiday to avoid disappointed customers, make sure those goods reach their destination in time, there’s nothing worse than negative social media complaints.

The key to mastering the potential offered by Q4 is laid in proper planning. To attract an influx of potential holiday shoppers to your store, get started now preparing a SEM/SEO holiday campaign that uses combinations of important keywords such as “Black Friday coupon” or “holiday gift”. You might even consider revising product descriptions to include information such as age groups or hobby recommendations. Use searchable keywords and language that inspires gift-giving.

Once the customer is in your online shop, make the shopping process as clear and simple as possible. This includes everything from optimising your mobile approach to offering a simplified checkout process. You might even want to throw in some extra goodies, such as a voucher or freebie, as an extra incentive to make a purchase in your shop. Remember: this is not only an opportunity to make extra sales, but also acquire return customers, so focus on offering your customers an unparalleled shopping experience.

Make sure you use sales reports from previous years to analyse what products sell well over the Q4 period. Find out your daily sell out rate, then factor in some growth from last year to work out how much inventory you need to cover you up to the end of December.
Between Black Friday and Christmas is a magic time for online retailers – the sun will shine, and it’scritical you don’t run out of stock.

Creating hampers and bundle listings of your products is a great way to generate more sales during the build up to Christmas. With the increase sales and traffic it is a great idea to have systems in place to automate time consuming tasks. If you have not already got these in place then learn the lesson and don’t make the same mistake next year!

British consumers will look to spend up to £152 on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. As one of the biggest ticket sales days of the year, online sellers should ensure their content marketing strategy is in place and ready to deploy to as soon as possible.

As your sales volume increases over Q4, so does the risk of suspensions – more orders means more opportunities for complaints and mistakes. 1 thing you can do now to reduce issues is to increase your dispatch1 thing you can do now to reduce issues is to increase your dispatch latency / handling time to 4 days or more to ensure you have plenty more time to dispatch your orders at peak times.

This year do your research and check out products and ideas that are the latest or up and coming trend. This could include new devices, kids movies or toys coming out.

If you’re selling on Amazon then send some your products to FBA, especially the best-sellers and the products most likely to succeed. It will take some workload off of you,plus could increase sales as it would be a prime listing and buyers are more likely to purchase, knowing they will get speedy delivery.

An additional bonus is that FBA will handle the customer support as well, so after the holidays when those inevitable messages start flooding in, you won’t have to worry about the additional workload.

For the majority of Sellers, Q4 is the period that pulls the whole year into focus, more sales, more stress and pressure, more staff as temps are taken on and trained. So I’m hoping you’re prepared, whether it’s your first time, or you’re an old hand. warehouse tidied and sorted, stock take done, help from your partners and suppliers to get everything running at its peak, ready to come out of the blocks as the credit cards are brought forth.

Coming out of the summer, you SHOULD have your purchase orders sorted, so your suppliers know you need extra stock and won’t short-change you and leave you in the lurch – No-one wants their best sellers to be showing as out of stock BEFORE Black Friday!

Holiday season is around the corner and you should put all your efforts in earning big. However, don’t start your holiday season sales campaign without any preparation.

Since you’re expecting traffic, don’t compromise on your hosting provider. Many online stores opt for inexpensive plans (with minimal bandwidth, disk space, and support, etc.) to save costs. Thus, during the crunch of Q4, the store is unable to handle the traffic and goes down. A managed cloud hosting service is the best way to go during Q4 (and throughout the year as well) because you could focus on the business rather than worrying about store hosting and performance issues.

Christmas is the true capacity test for sellers, and many become a victim of their own success if their customer service (CS) team can’t keep up with the often drastic upswing. Answering questions in foreign languages requires even more time and attention, consuming precious resource and posing a specific challenge. But this doesn’t have to be the case. Preparing ahead of time and having a backup plan is well worth your while. There are ad-hoc multilingual CS companies who can back up your team as needed. Whether it’s a bandwidth issue or languages your team doesn’t speak, ad-hoc CS protects your hard-earned feedback ratings. Many sellers settle for Google Translate to satisfy their CS needs and are sorely disappointed when this results in negative feedback or even worse, suspension. With a little preparation, this doesn’t need to happen to you.

Making the most of this marketplace

Your strategy on Amazon is dependant on the products you are selling and your business model. As a reseller of branded goods, you will typically find yourself competing for the buy box on a listing. Key ways to be effective in this situation is to have the best price, use FBA and make sure your account health and metrics are in top shape.

If you have your own brand of goods then you have more manoeuvrability in regards to the strategy. You will be able to control your listings and decide whether you want to use FBA or not.

Amazon also has some interesting programmes for companies with their own brands including brand registry, seller fulfilled prime and Amazon vendor central where you actually sell the goods to Amazon directly.